1. Field
The disclosure relates generally an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus of managing information. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus of managing databases.
2. Description of the Related Art
Databases are commonly used to store information for retrieval or processing. Databases are managed by a database management system. The database management system receives and stores data in the database. The database management system also performs queries on databases managed by the database management system to modify or retrieve particular information.
Databases are often organized in tables. Each table is composed of rows and columns. Each column in the table represents a particular type of information. For example, a database table for products sold at a store may have columns for the name of the product, the price, and the quantity available. Each row in the table is an entry in the table for a particular entity. The row contains values for the columns in the table. For example, a row in the table for products sold at a store may contain the text “potato chips” in the name column, $1.00 in the price column, and 20 in the quantity available. The database may then be queried or searched for a number of different conditions. For example, a query for items in the table that have a quantity available of 10 or above would return the potato chips row.
A database grows in size as more data is stored in the database. As database size grows, the speed with which the database may be queried decreases. The speed decreases because there is more data in the database that must be processed by the database management system to determine whether the row meets the criteria in the query. A query may be performed more quickly by reducing the number of records processed in performing the query. Splitting a table into two or more tables reduces the number of records processed in performing a query when fewer than all of the two or more tables split from the larger table are processed in performing the query.
Additionally, data may be added to the database. When data is added to the database, the data may not be closely related to the data in any particular table in the database. When the data is not related to the data in any particular table in the database, an administrator may create a new table to store the added data.